A Gentleman’s Game (10 page)

“Oh—well.” He shrugged this off, then stuffed the medal into the pocket of his waistcoat, from which the ribbon poked out alongside his fob. “This is a pleasant village, isn’t it? If home felt like this, I mightn’t be so eager to take to the road.”

“And how does it feel to you?” She couldn’t seem to stop asking questions. Her tidy control was packed away. Today she was a woman who danced, and who owned a ribbon so green it would bring a man to his knees.

The thought made her smile as she blinked up at Nathaniel. His eyes were blue, as blue as the Suffolk sky in springtime. She had learned the shade of their brightness.

Slowly, he smiled. “It feels,” he said, “like the sort of place where a man might kiss a woman with a crown of red flowers in her hair.”

Her heart thudded a bit faster; her knees went watery. “It does feel that way,” she whispered. “To me too.”

He tipped up her chin, his hand strong yet gentle along the line of her jaw. “Thank God for that.” And there in the shadow of a building once devoured by flame, he lowered his lips to hers.

Once their lips met, Nathaniel could not imagine how he had waited so long to kiss her.

Oh, there were reasons on reasons not to. She was his father’s secretary, and he had some sort of business arrangement with her about…something…

Honestly, who cared about the reasons why not? There were even more reasons why this was right.

The soft, almost hesitant curve of her mouth before he covered it with his own.

The surprised inhale that smoothed into a
hmmm
of pleasure.

The sweet-spiced taste of her as her lips parted, letting them fit together more deeply with his. As the tip of his tongue brushed hers, setting them both to shivering, he tasted the candied almonds. He tasted the heat of her and breathed in her scent. She was flowers and laughter and all the joys of a muddled morning. Of a race won. A medal for doing what was right.

Her hands wound around his neck, nails trailing lightly through his short-cropped hair. He could have groaned at the feeling, gentle and intimate, and he bent to wrap her more closely within his embrace. His hand trailed from her face to her shoulder to her back to fit her close to him. To press against her, solid and smiling and crimson-crowned and lovely.

She made another little
hmm
, and he went tense as a bowstring at the erotic sound. He laced his fingers into her plaited hair beneath its wreath of blooms. Feeling the shape of her head through her sleek hair was intimate. He almost felt as though he were holding her thoughts. Could he tell what was on her mind? How could he understand her, a woman so eager for sweetness but who had never yet claimed it?

Secretaries don’t
, she had said—yet she did right now, and thank the Lord for that. One kiss trembled into the next: one soft and tentative, one deep and hungry. The next shy, the following one fervent. Mouth and tongue, hand and breath and warm skin; the coolness of a shade that made him feel as though no one could see them. As though they could carry on forever, finding each other, wanting, tasting.

A breeze ruffled his hair. At some point, she must have tipped off his hat. He didn’t care. He liked it. He wanted her to strip off more. To see him differently. To keep kissing him as though she had never liked anything so much, as though she were helpless to stop. As though she were drunk on the pleasure of it.

Drunk
.

One drink was never enough, and so he should have none.

Kissing Rosalind Agate was the same sort of thing. He couldn’t afford the distraction—not now that he had finally been trusted to lead.
Trust Nathaniel
.

She did, and he couldn’t stop kissing her. It seemed the day had been made for this moment.

He had to shove her away with his hands, even as his lips refused to let go. Stumbling backward, he smacked into the solid brick husk of the burned-out inn. “I…” Should he apologize? He didn’t want to.

Rosalind blinked at him, fingertips drifting to her kiss-pinkened lips. “Is this what happens when a woman wears red flowers in her hair?”

He laid a palm against the brick, pushing himself upright. “It is if she is you. And if she wants such kisses.”

“I did. I—thank you. I have never been kissed like that.” Her lips trembled with what was almost a smile. “It is not part of my position.” Was she more surprised by their brief embrace, or was he?

“Nor should it be. A kiss should be for yourself alone.”

“Oh, I don’t think I could feel this way on my own. Surely the person sharing the kiss is…” She trailed off. Her fingers fluttered to the bonnet ribbon about her neck. Still the old one, faded until it was no color at all. “A kiss is made by two. And it belongs to both of them.”

“It does at that.” The words made his heart thump more heartily.

Her gaze was so direct that he dodged it, bending to pick up his fallen hat and brush off imaginary dust. He didn’t want her to look too closely at him quite yet. Not until he assembled himself again, from hat to cheeky grin. Not until he knew exactly what they’d shared with that kiss, and why, and what it meant.

Venturing a glance about, he caught a knowing smile from a goodwife or two. The end of a laugh between two farmers elbowing themselves. Today there was no scandal in a public kiss, not in such a festive atmosphere. It would be easy to laugh it off as a tipsy pleasure. As meaning nothing at all.

When he straightened up, hat firmly in place, he brushed the point of Rosalind’s chin with a tentative fingertip. “Thank you, Rosalind.”

He would not make a nothing of their kisses.

And she must have realized what he was doing, what he meant, for she smiled. It was a sunrise sort of smile, sneaking up a bit at a time until all of a sudden everything was bright and glowing. A man could lose his heart to a smile like that. A man could find himself at a woman’s feet.

“Thank you, Nathaniel. For…all of it. For the morning, and the…” She blushed, a pink that seemed the prettiest shade there had ever been.

“Kisses?” He lifted a brow.

She went still pinker. “The ribbon, I was going to say. And the almonds.”

“That’s what you were going to say, was it?” He was enjoying this.

“It’s quite a list. There might be a few other things I need to thank you for, too.”

He wanted to fold her in his arms again. “There is nothing for which you need to thank me, Rosalind. Anything I gave you was because I wanted you to have it. Not because I wanted to awaken any feeling of obligation.”

She lifted a hand, touching one of the carnations in her flowered crown. “I feel different this morning. With you.” Her hand fell, and when she fixed her eyes on him, they were puzzled. “But it’s only for the morning, isn’t it? This crown of flowers will soon fade. And I am still a secretary.”

And he, her employer’s son, on whom obligations were a load of bricks carried over thin ice. For the morning, she had trusted him. But would she continue?

He traced a ruffled carnation petal, wanting to touch her hair, her face again. “Maybe secretaries can do more than you allow.”

“They do wear many hats.” She stepped back, ducking her head as she tugged free the wreath of flowers and hung it around her wrist. “But not always of the sort one would wish.”

She lifted the bonnet that dangled down her back and resettled it on her head. “It was a beautiful fete, Nathaniel. Thank you for bringing me with you.” Again, the smile, though this one was more like a sunset going dim. “And I thank you not from obligation, but because I want you to know what pleasure I took. In everything.”

“I didn’t…” He shook his head. “Wait. What’s this? Are you ready to leave?”

She gave a little shrug and an impish smile. “As though anything could surpass this morning’s festivities? You have your medal, and I have been…”

He liked seeing her blush. “Thoroughly kissed?”

“Right. And so I must return to the Dog and Pony now, I think. I’ve much work to do.”

“I’ll walk with you. Let me just locate our grooms so they can return with us. As you say, we all have work to complete this afternoon.” He hesitated. “This morning—it was my pleasure too, Rosalind. All of it.”

Polite words; for once, politeness and truth coincided. But he was talking about far more than a bit of company at the fete, and they had come far more than a half mile from where they had been this morning.

If only he had some idea where they ought to go next.

* * *

Though the entire afternoon stretched ahead for correspondence, once Rosalind seated herself at the small writing desk in her bedchamber at the Dog and Pony, she had difficulty composing the letter she owed.

She began her daily report as she had so many times before:

Anweledig,

Commanded directly to depart the instructed location, I could not find any excuse to remain and continue the search. The horses are safe due to Alpha’s new means of keeping watch. I am in Gamma’s party, journeying southward…

What more was there to say than this? She couldn’t tell Aunt Annie that she had spent a morning in leisure. Dancing, kissing, laughing. Wearing delight like a new garment tailored just for her, fitting better than she had ever expected.

It was my pleasure too
, Nathaniel had said.

And she had done that? Had brought him that?

The feeling was warm and winding, wrapping her in sweet satisfaction.

A wreath of red carnations hung over the corner of the privacy screen, beneath a bonnet that hung from a plain ribbon nothing like the color of her eyes. The green ribbon was in her pocket still. A hidden luxury that seemed, now that she had left the fete, like a promise that she could return to such a time of joy. Someday. Sometime.

She drew the ribbon out and looked at its luxuriant coil. A twist of silk that Nathaniel Chandler had sworn would win her unimaginable fortune.

And was he wrong? Never had she imagined such a kiss, her first real kiss. The slow melt of it, the intimate press of heartbeat to heart. It woke her body, made her think.

Made her want more of the same and of what came next.
Trust Nathaniel
, he had said, and she knew that she did.

Too much. More than she ought. Not because she knew him too little, but because she knew herself too well.

She knew why she had kissed him back. But why had he kissed her? Because she was there? Smiling? Because the fete made him want to celebrate with whomever was near?

If that was so, then that was all right. But she hoped it was more. And that—that was a bundle of feeling she’d never had the right to entertain, nor the leisure.

Returning her gaze to her letter, she rubbed at her elbow and set quill to paper once more. She tried out a few sentences for Aunt Annie, halting and crossing out each one until her usually neat handwriting looked like the hatch marks of an engraver’s piece. Whatever she wrote sounded like excuses. Disobedience, pretexts, a cover for knowing nothing more than she should.

But surely it was all right if she neglected sending a single letter or even two. Once she reached Epsom, she could write to Aunt Annie with a promise of certain payment, not the uncertainty of the hunt for information.

Yes, surely that would be all right. Aunt Annie wanted results. Evidence. Proof. And there could be no result more valuable, no evidence of Rosalind’s loyalty better, than the discharge of a long-held debt.

She took up another sheet of paper, for there was a second letter she owed.

Sir William,

After two days of travel, we are stopped at the Dog and Pony. Progress has been more than satisfactory. Your son has seen to the safety of the horses above all, maintaining the system of two-person watches you put into place in Newmarket…

She would not lie, but she did not have to tell him
everything
. Her fingertips drifted to her lips, where she remembered the taste of heat, of sugared almonds.

Another sentence or two completed this daily report, and she blotted, folded, and sealed it. She would ask the innkeeper to send it; Sir William would receive it the next day.

The paper on which she had begun her letter to Aunt Annie lay atop the desk, a reproach in iron gall ink and cotton rag paper.

Rosalind folded that too. And folded it again and again, until she had a shape resembling a flattened pyramid.

Pushing back her chair and rising to her feet, she tossed it toward the fireplace. Her aim was true.

Standing at a safe distance, she watched the letter burn.

On Whit Tuesday, Jonathan Peters, a traveler bound for Epsom, won a pair of buckskin gloves by wrestling against all takers. One cannot state whether his opponents were more impressed by his skill, or whether ladies were more impressed by the man’s form after he stripped off his coat.

—
Kelting Monitor

Rosalind was not the only one who had enjoyed the fete, she realized when the young redheaded groom passed the local broadsheet around the Dog and Pony’s public room the following morning. It was a newer edition of the paper in which her almonds had been wrapped, and it reported the happenings of the previous day with a spirited lilt that reminded Rosalind of George Hutchins’s pride in his village.

But there was little time for congratulations, even with a pair of undeniably fine buckskin gloves to admire. A day of travel lay ahead, and packing and preparations for horses and humans alike needed to be carried out with all haste.

When she took to Farfalla’s saddle again though, Rosalind found her mind as free as her body was occupied. She allowed her thoughts to go wandering, far from the narrow ribbon of road along which the little mare carried her in tidy step with the other travelers. Step after step closer to Epsom, she thought back to the boisterous years before she was burned and to all the quiet years of service since, tracing Aunt Annie’s secrets. Collecting pieces of a puzzle when she had no idea where they would fit or what the final picture might look like.

Before meeting Nathaniel Chandler, she had never thought that there might be a future for her beyond the next post, the next house, the next piece of the puzzle. But now she had helped horses recover from illness. She had persuaded the stake for a small fortune from Nathaniel Chandler just by being honest about her need.

She had changed the faded ribbon on her bonnet for the green one the color of her eyes. She had worn red flowers in her hair, and it had been better than her childhood dream. Even now, the wilting wreath was folded within a clean linen shift and preserved in her traveling trunk. Maybe she would wear it again before a glass to remind herself that for a morning, she had been different. More.

Perhaps it was time to think of a new dream. The tight scars that laced her back and right side need not constrain her to this sort of life forever. Once she paid her debt to Aunt Annie, and Aunt Annie paid Tranc, then…

Then she would decide what to do.

If there was one thing she had realized during her brief time in Sir William Chandler’s employment, it was that she learned quickly—and that nothing she had ever learned was wasted.

* * *

As the day’s travel began, Nathaniel noticed that Rosalind kept a thoughtful distance. He knew the difference between an angry silence and every other sort, and this wasn’t the former. She had changed the ribbon on her bonnet to the green one he had chosen, and every once in a while her fingertips drifted to the colorful ends tied beneath her chin.

Every time she did, he tried to hide a smile, not wanting her to catch him watching.

When they passed through Kelting a short way south of the Dog and Pony, where the Whit week festivities still held sway, she waved at the boy roasting food at the edge of the green. He had brought sausages again today, and the smoky smell was rich as it drifted across the road.

The burned brick structure of the Cock and Bull seemed to watch them pass with wistful windowless eyes.
I’d like to stay
, thought Nathaniel. It seemed a pleasant village. Though of course a morning spent in festivity was far different from the everyday wheel of the villagers’ lives. One could not spend one’s life counting on dances and kisses.

He slanted another glance at Rosalind, whose fingers strayed again to the ribbon of her bonnet. The simple gesture made something shift within him, something that had weighed on him, maybe since he had gulped ale the previous day.

He had chosen to stop drinking. And he had chosen to stop kissing her. He was not sure how he had found the strength; maybe only because he thought stopping was right.

Yet they weren’t the same sort of wrong. While ale—or wine or brandy or whatever he lay hands on—made him feel less himself, kissing Rosalind Agate made him feel…more.

And from the way she touched the ribbon, as though she could not believe it real, maybe she felt the same way.

* * *

This far north of London, they met few travelers. Even so, Rosalind noticed that Nathaniel sent the outriders before and behind, ever watchful.

The party paused for a quick meal at midday, then continued southward at a steady pace. After their day’s rest, the Thoroughbreds had recovered their spirits and were looking much like they’d never suffered from colic at all. Pale Marauder was like a child in leading strings, blundering off in every direction and always wanting to be first. If he didn’t tire himself by making the trip to Epsom twice as long as it ought to be—weaving about the road, halting and backing, circling—his obstinacy would carry him to the front during the Derby.

Epigram was much better behaved, though also like a young child, there was nothing he wouldn’t try to eat. Soon after the midday break, at which people and horses alike had eaten their fill, they passed a farmer traveling between farm and village. His low-sided wooden cart, painted green and pulled by a small donkey alongside which he walked, was heaped with the fragile good things of spring: spinach, cauliflower, lettuce, cucumber. Carrots, thin and small, their leaves a feathery riot of green. Stalks of rhubarb, early strawberries like bright gems. Even a few radishes, which made Rosalind think of the gelding Jake.

She fell behind the Thoroughbreds and Nathaniel, slowing Farfalla to watch the progress of the spring-bright cart. Thus she had a fine view as Epigram stretched out his sturdy neck. When the cart passed, he planted his feet, then wheeled and tried to follow. Lombard, holding his lead, coaxed him back around—but then the colt tugged, the folded rope slipped from Lombard’s hand, and off went Epigram in a trot after the cart.

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” muttered Rosalind. Lombard was shouting a far worse epithet, one that halted the outriders. He raced after Epigram, boots raising puffs of road dust, but no one could trot as fast as a horse except…well, a trotting horse. Rosalind drew Farfalla to a halt, but she was too unsteady in her sidesaddle to gallop, and the outriders were too far off…

But here came Nathaniel, nudging Bumblebee into an easy canter. Rosalind turned in her saddle, watching him pass Lombard and catch up with Epigram just before he reached the cart.

At once, Nathaniel halted the cob and leaned from his saddle to catch the colt’s lead line. When Epigram tried to take another step, he found himself pulled up short, then had his head turned the way from which he’d come. Shaking his head, the bay colt took another step.

Rosalind could see Nathaniel’s lips moving, a low, slow patter of calm speech. But Epigram, usually so placid, wanted to follow the farmer’s cart as badly as Rosalind had ever wanted anything in her life. It was as though the colt wanted to make up for every mouthful of feed he’d left untouched during his colic.

She remembered the almonds in the pocket of her traveling dress. Pulling the paper twist forth, she rattled it and called Epigram’s name. With one hand holding Farfalla’s reins, she flipped open the folded paper. Could horses smell sugar? Surely they had a better sense of smell than people.

Aha. Apparently horses could. Farfalla’s ears pricked up, and she turned her head to fix Rosalind with a reproachful brown eye.
You had a treat all this time, and you weren’t going to share it with me?

“Er—this really is not a good time, Farfalla,” said Rosalind. “Please. I’ll plait your mane if you help with this.”

The dainty ears swiveled as though the mare was deciding. Again, Rosalind rattled the nuts and called Epigram’s name. Nathaniel shot her a grateful look, and with a few more words in Epigram’s ear, he turned the colt away from the cart. Puffing, Lombard pounded up to the wayward colt, took hold of his lead, and coaxed him back into line.

As they passed Rosalind, she extended a flat palm with the remaining few sugared almonds atop it. Epigram blinked at her with knowing dark eyes as he lipped up the treat.

“I wonder if you knew what you were about the whole time,” Rosalind murmured. “Did you want these instead of something from the cart? I’d make the same choice. They are delicious, aren’t they?”

As though annoyed that he had missed a chance to create a fuss, Pale Marauder stamped a foot and, as soon as Lombard drew near with the other colt, shouldered into Epigram. If Farfalla had possessed the power of speech, Rosalind imagined she would have rolled her eyes and muttered, “Boys.
Honestly
.”

“You deserve that plait,” Rosalind said, busying her fingers in the mare’s coarse mane while Nathaniel clambered down from Bumblebee’s back.

The farmer must have been hard of hearing to miss the agitation in the party he’d just passed. But he didn’t miss Nathaniel riding up to him, hopping down alongside the donkey, and laying one gentle hand on the beast while the other pulled coins from his purse. Rosalind watched, curious, as he negotiated with the grizzled man, then came away with a handful of carrots.

As the cart trundled on, Bumblebee received the first treat. The bay crunched the thin young carrot from tip to leaf as Nathaniel remounted. Every other horse, from the sturdy quartet ridden by the outriders to the chestnuts that pulled the carriage, also received one. Even Pale Marauder, once he was pulled away from Epigram. And Farfalla, whose mane was now a tidy row of half-plaited, half-sprung sections.

And even Epigram, once he started walking alongside Lombard again.

When Nathaniel dropped Bumblebee into a rolling stride alongside Farfalla, Rosalind said, “I presume a milkmaid pulled the lead from Lombard’s hand.”

“Who else?” said Nathaniel. “And another encouraged the cart to roll by.”

She felt shy about saying more, as though to speak would be to remind him of her superfluous presence. Nathaniel had handled this hiccup in their smooth travel swiftly and with goodwill. Rosalind hadn’t been needed to ensure Sir William’s wishes were respected. She really wasn’t needed on this journey at all.

“You knew just what to do,” she finally said. “To keep the horses calm.”

“I’ve met milkmaids before.” He darted a glance at her, sky-bright and loaded with wicked humor. “But what were you about, giving Epigram your almonds? If I’d known you hadn’t eaten them all, I’d have shoved them in your mouth when you breakfasted this morning.”

“How gentlemanly.”

He chuckled. “I mean well, you know. I don’t want you to give away any bit of that happiness you felt yesterday in getting what you wished.”

While one hand held the rein, her other strayed to the broad silken ends of her new green ribbon. “I didn’t give it away. I made it last longer.”

“By rationing it out? Happiness is not such a scarcity as that, I hope.”

“Whether it is or isn’t, I like knowing I have a few almonds in my pocket in case of need.”

He shook his head. As though feeling a change in the reins, Bumblebee shook his head too. “I can see I’m never going to convince you that you should gobble up treats when they come your way. So instead I’ll thank you for your help. Without it, Epigram might have eaten half the fruit on that cart, and then we’d have had a new case of colic to treat.”

“You wouldn’t have let that happen.” Yet his words brought a blush to her cheeks.

“I wouldn’t have wanted it to. But no man can cope alone with the world’s milkmaids.” Though she watched the road, she thought he smiled. There was something different in the feel of the air. “I am glad you’re here.”

Now, what was she to say to that? She managed only a sort of squeak and a deepening of the blush.

Maybe she didn’t have to ration out happiness at that. She might not have almonds in her pockets anymore, but as long as she traveled with Nathaniel Chandler, another joy would be coming her way.

* * *

At the end of that day, they stopped at a posting house Nathaniel knew well near the town of Bishop’s Stortford. The Blue Castle was an ancient wattle-and-daub structure with age-blackened timbers in a diamond pattern brightened by white plaster. The galleries around the central courtyard sagged slightly, rather like a traveler ready to set down a heavy load.

The innkeeper, Filbert, was used to wealthy travelers’ custom of arriving with their own horses and carriages. In the entryway, he greeted Nathaniel with his usual simper and bow, revealing as he did a patch of thinning dark hair across which he had slicked desperate strands. Thus began anew the familiar process of arranging lodging for people and beasts, for setting watches in the stable.

When the grooms drifted off to join the ostlers in the stable, Filbert spotted Rosalind, and his smile fell. “We ca’er to polite folk, not to la’ybirds. She canno’ stay here.”

Nathaniel’s head snapped back. He opened his mouth, ready to defend Rosalind’s honor—but she spoke first.

“Mr. Filbert.” She lifted her chin. “Do you honestly imagine that a
ladybird
”—she spread her plummy accent heavily over the word—“would appear dressed in a straw bonnet and riding habit? Or that I would travel in company with so many men if I were improper? A lady takes one groom to preserve her reputation. I travel with two of them, as well as five guards, a coachman, and—”

“Mr. Nathaniel Chandler,” Nathaniel said helpfully. “Who is nothing but proper, Filbert, as you know.”

The innkeeper wiped his hands on the clean white apron that overspread his linen shirt and breeches. “I haven’ the room for her.”

“Oh, that’s all right. She can have my room, and I’ll sleep in the stable.” He smiled as though the entire exchange had been a delight. “Problem solved.”

The innkeeper looked doubtful. “I haven’ ever…”

“Mr. Filbert.” Rosalind untied the bow of her bonnet strings, settling in. “If you know Mr. Nathaniel Chandler well enough to know how proper he is—”